Printers for providing visual output from computing systems may be comprised of impact printers of several different varieties as well as non-impact printers such as a laser printer. Output printers may have all points addressable (APA) capability in order to provide high quality graphics and image reproduction as well as text reproduction. Recent years have seen the introduction of advanced function intelligent page printers which are capable of organizing a page to be printed from transmitted commands and vector information far more condensed than a page bit map. As a consequence, the speed with which jobs are processed are more and more bound by the speed of the printer itself and less bound by the data transmission from the host computing system.
Output printers are frequently attached in a local area network or other transmission system where several computers use a single output printer. In such systems, it is increasingly common to encounter users with several different datastreams. In such case, it is desirable to provide an output printer with the capability of receiving print jobs and being able to process those jobs from a variety of datastreams. In any event, a printer with multiple datastream capability is usable in a larger number of environments. It is desirable for such a printer to accept different datastream transmission at the request of the using application without the need for physical intervention at the printer itself.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide an initializing procedure for a page printer that will enable the printer to accept one of a variety of datastreams at the command of the application.
It is another object of this invention to provide an initializing processor which will enable the application to alter printer default parameters so that physical intervention at the printer itself is not necessary.
It is still another object of this invention to enable the printer set-up to be accomplished while the preceding job is still being printed so that one or more pages of the succeeding job can be transmitted to the printer and placed in the ready state to activate the printer as soon a the preceding job is finished.
It is still another object of the invention to enable the application to selectively delete either temporarily or permanently downloaded fonts and macros in order to free machine memory for the job at hand.
It is still another object of the invention to enable the application to alter printer default parameters permanently as well as temporarily.
It is an object of the invention to enable the application to establish a personalized job environment and to return the printer to a known installation environment at job conclusion.